Eternalism
by Maya Sushi
Summary: ...he takes dark days to contemplate what it would be like to perish. When he looks at his skin it is so perfect and new that it is ugly; he wants to rip it from his body and tear his muscles from his bones... Hell is no fun alone. She loves him.


_**Disclaimer: **_I do not own Tangled and I am very sad about that. Aren't you?

_**A/N: **_Anyone reading Inimical? I'll update that soon! Promise!

So, this is going to be a shorter story, and... Yeah. So here~ :D

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_**Eternalism**_

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_ONE_

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Her hands are filled with ashes. They slide between the cracks of her fingers and leave charcoal gray streaks of despair across her cheeks. She looks at him and she is shocked. She is astounded.

There is fire all around.

He frowns at her, tremendously, his own countenance more assured. His eyes are as dark as the sky, where there is no sun or stars, there is only this slate of empty recognition. He could look up and know, _this is the sky_, he doesn't need pretty to prove facts. Some things have been the same way for ages, and they will never change.

Other things will.

"We did this." The words hold no accusation. She is merely speaking. There is no greater meaning behind each of these individual syllables, there is no careful. Why would they even _need _careful anymore?

"Yes." He answers her as honestly as he can, though he has doubts over whether or not her words were even a question. His hand embarks on a small journey, each movement is, and finds its home upon her shoulder. In comfort – he leans into her – for both of them.

Her fists clench and they come back blackened by the soot. His own hands fall into her own. They cling to each other miserably.

The palace of Corona is on fire.

.

They are standing in a field, forty paces apart, and he knows this because he has counted each of them.

When they reach fifty-two, he turns around.

When she goes on alone, it is only for a second. She makes it all the way to fifty-four.

"Why are we doing this?" He asks then, when her blue eyes turn and find his own. They are not far from one another, but he feels like there has never been a distance stretched further than the one they have created now.

"I don't want to be alone," she amends, hands wandering out freely, unrestrained. She is reaching. "Not like this."

"I don't want you to be."  
When they move again, they meet in the middle, and they wonder why they had ever thought to walk away at all.

.

They were young when they fell in love. They have never fallen out.

They are young still, but they feel so old.

A man stands before them, and he is quivering. He wonders – not the man, the man does not wonder – he wonders when they had become this: a story, a legend. When had they become a simple work of fiction?

"I heard..." His voice is dry and his palms are wet – the man's, that is – and he is so pathetic that it is sickening. "You are magic. That I... Could live..."

"Forever?" He interrupts, this man wants eternity. He is a fool. He reminds him of himself .

She does not let the man respond. "You are mistaken," she cries, "so don't waste your time."

He wants to slap the man, when he hesitates. He wants to yell and scream and curse and die, all at once. When the man is gone, she turns to him.

Let's leave. She offers. He feels as if they are the wind. He says, let's.

.

They leave again and again. They leave too much. They never arrive.

.

"We haven't run out of places to go, we've ran out of places to go _from_."

"Those are the same thing," she giggles.

They're not.

Take some wood and an ocean and most likely you'll get buoyancy. They build a ship and they never burn it.

"Maybe we'll find your island out there." She humors the possibility in a way that reeks of hope, of gentle abandon.

"We will." His answer is desolate, brooding, and she can do nothing but agree. She knows this is fact as much as he does. They have forever to search. All the time they could ever want.

All the time they don't want. That they've never wanted.

She is not surprised when they find his island.

She is not surprised when they leave it.

They build a ship and they never burn it.

.

She has damned him to an eternal hell and still he adores her.

She knows she has but she will not stop, will never stop. Hell is no fun alone. She loves him.

They did not want to die, but now, they are not sure. Who's to say what one wants? So complex is their life, in its monotonous simplicity, that he takes dark days to contemplate what it would be like to perish. When he looks at his skin it is so perfect and new that it is ugly; he wants to rip it from his body and tear his muscles from his bones.

He has no doubt she would put him back together again.

This is why he does not.

.

She is scared.

She scares herself. She finds fear in her own mentality and she trembles with the corruption of her soul. She is glowing, literally, but she is filled with shadows, metaphorically. It is the metaphor that governs her in life, after all, and she is so frightened by the things she cannot illuminate.

She remembers Gothel, like a memory of infancy, now. Everything is so aged, so pallid and hue-less, vague and impassive, there is panic and love and death and the weight of a thousand moments falling away from her shoulders. In this world where the color has been drained, in this half-lived perception of her past, her hair lays darkened on the floor of her tower. Gothel is fading away to dust.

She wants to know what that feels like. To deterioriate. If you take a second to decay and rot and fall apart and disappear, how do you assimilate this? What do you experience? What do you think? What will you realize? _Who_ will you become? _What_ will you become? _Will _you become? Or rather, will you just blow away?

Gone, that is. Are you gone?

She cannot bear the thought of losing him, though, and she is terrified of that possibility the very most. If she is scared of her traitorous misgivings – her "if I die"'s – then she is more so of the cause and effect. The reprecussions.

She fears being without him, in any way.

She is scared.

.

Some days, it is too much to even direct words at one another.

Most days, they are lost.

Often, she wonders if time sometimes goes backward. If maybe it just flows however it wishes, in any direction it desires – perhaps it moves in every direction at once, that is, if time is partial to variety – and maybe this is why she cannot find herself in it. Or, if it is always flowing forward, and it always will be. And if it has escaped her.

They will stand on this frozen square of other-worldly inception and it will fly by them. It will never stop, and they already have.

If that is the case.

He never wonders if time has escaped them. Things do not come curious and exotic to him, every day is not its own, unique conundrum. She is the one who enjoys the mystery of her every breath. He is, respectfully, opposite. He knows his lungs are responsible for his constant respiration – he often blames them for the continuing existence of his life – and he knows that time has not passed them by, it has not escaped them.

They have escaped time.

They are transcendence, but they have become repitition, and their show is quickly growing old. He finds himself tiring of it.

Some days, she agrees.

.

They are trapped.

They are trapped and they cannot even see the walls of their prison.

His hands are tangled in the short crop of chestnut silk that lies atop her head and their skin is pressed together. So tight. They could become one person and not even notice the change. They move simultaenously with every new breath. They push and they pull. They are a harmony of sorts. There is nothing that can tear them apart.

Nothing but each other.

A year is spent gasping their names into each other's mouths.

For a decade after this, they have no names. They forget identity entirely and they speak in a language of sensation.

There is a century in which they are made only to touch.

When it is over, he slants his lips over hers – they hardly know how to exist without touching now – and his hands grip her shoulders. So tight. (They could become one person and not even notice the change.)

I love you so much. This is what he tells her, and he means every word more than he ever has before. I love you.

I love you more.

Her answer makes him grin against the smooth edge of her collar bone, and he drags his smile across the blushing tegument of her chest.

"You're wrong."

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_**A/N: **_Mhmm... So, anyone have the jist of what's going down in this story? There's gonna be two or three chapters. I was going to make it all one, but I decided against it. Thanks for reading! Drop a review if you did, :) Please?


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